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HP Offers TouchPad On Discount Month After Launch

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Hewlett-Packard Co is offering a hefty discount on its TouchPad tablet a month after it launched the WebOS-based mobile device in a booming market dominated by Apple Inc's iPad.

The company is offering an instant rebate of $100 on its website for both its 16 GB and 32 GB tablet versions, bringing their price down to $400 and $500, respectively.

This makes the TouchPad $100 cheaper than Apple's entry-level iPad.

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HP has not revealed any sales figures on the tablet that launched in July along with a celebrity-studded marketing campaign. But the 9.7-inch tablet got off to a tepid start after critics assailed the TouchPad for poor battery life, slow processing speed and paucity of apps.

A HP spokesperson said the discount, which runs from August 5-7, was part of the company's regular seasonal promotions.

"We're excited to offer the promotion and deepen our commitment to deliver competitive products at competitive prices," she said in a statement.

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The entry-level TouchPad is also being offered on Woot.com, a daily-deal site, at a further discount of $20.

Much of a mobile device's success is based on a robust ecosystem of apps, and HP is far behind Apple or Google's Android platform in the number of apps available.

The tablet was launched following HP's $1.2 billion acquisition of Palm and its WebOS platform last year with the hope the operating software will be incorporated into all the company's mobile devices and applications.

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Shares of HP ended up 9 cents at $32.63 in a wildly volatile day on the New York Stock Exchange and other markets.

(Reporting by Poornima Gupta; Editing by Bernard Orr and Richard Chang)


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